Dive Brief:

• Mega merchant payments services provider Worldpay has signed up for an assist from the Chicago startup Aeropay in the world of gaming payments, according to a post on the latter’s website Tuesday. 
• The new partnership will let Worldpay’s gaming merchant clients integrate Aeropay’s services and offer account-to-account payments, including gamer deposits by bank ACH and instant around-the-clock withdrawals via The Clearing House’s RTP real-time network.
• "This partnership with Aeropay allows us to offer a new level of A2A services previously unavailable to our clients,” Joseph Watkins, Worldpay’s president of gaming solutions, said in the post, calling the new Aeropay options faster and more efficient.

Dive Insight:

The companies haven’t partnered previously, and this new arrangement will go live next year, a Worldpay spokesperson said by email, declining to comment on the financial terms of the arrangement. The spokesperson also declined to name Worldpay’s current gaming clients.

"This new partnership strengthens Worldpay’s commitment to supporting online gaming merchants in the U.S.," the Worldpay spokesperson said. "As the industry continues to grow and evolve state by state, it's critical for gaming merchants to have solutions that drive both operational efficiency and player satisfaction."

The two companies have been laying the groundwork for the collaboration for about a year, and some Worldpay clients are in the process of onboarding, a spokesperson for Aeropay said.

“The partnership with Worldpay opens up a substantial serviceable addressable market, encompassing around 80% of the U.S. gaming industry,” the Aeropay spokesperson said by email. “This growth potential extends beyond gaming to include sectors like rental services, retail, and government entities.”

A spin-off of Worldpay by Fidelity National Information Services was completed earlier this year, with a majority stake sold to Chicago private equity firm GTCR. The newly independent Worldpay, which was owned by FIS for less than five years, re-established its headquarters in suburban Cincinnati.

Worlpay supports a variety of types of gaming around the world, from online offerings to those available on mobile devices to in-person gambling.

Aeropay has carved out a business providing pay-by-bank services in an effort to pitch faster, less expensive movement of money. Last year, Aeropay zeroed in on gaming companies in a big way, after catering to small and mid-sized businesses with a physical presence in its early days, and later to cannabis clients. It’s now channeling billions of dollars in volume in the gaming sphere across Aeropay’s platform for millions of users.

Aeropay’s gaming segment accounts for about 80% of the company’s revenue, the company’s CEO, Daniel Muller, said in an August interview. Those clients have tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue and thousands of employees, Muller said. One of Aeropay’s biggest customers is PrizePicks, an app-based fantasy sports service that lets users place bets related to professional sports players.